Dame Eileen Atkins, the celebrated actress and co-creator of the original Upstairs, Downstairs, recently opened the John Atkinson Grimshaw exhibition at the Richard Green Gallery (ANL, 9/13/11) on New Bond Street on Sept. 20. Read More

Elizabethan portraits accounted for five of the top-ten selling lots at Christie’s sale of the contents of Cowdray Park (Sept. 13-15). Four were full-length female portraits which had belonged to Lord Willoughby de Broke of Compton Verney until 1921, when they were bought by the second Viscount Cowdray. Read More

Since Bonhams announced its proposed £30 million rebuilding program this summer, it is becoming clearer that the company means business. While it is cutting down on its outpost activities in Knowle in the Midlands, and in Dubai, it is expanding in more important areas, namely contemporary art. Read More

A new art fair specialising in Old Master paintings is to be launched in Paris in November and has had the brainwave of inviting one of the world’s most successful contemporary artists, Jeff Koons, to lend works from his Old Master collection. Read More

Bonhams achieved its highest total to date for a series of Scottish art and antiques sales in Edinburgh last month when it sold all but 16 percent of 775 lots for £3.4 million ($5.5 million). Read More

LONDON—An Old Master painting that sold at auction for £39,000 ($80,000) less than four years ago, recently sold for £750,000 ($1.2 million) after having been altered by contemporary artists Jake and Dinos Chapman and included in their latest exhibition at White Cube gallery, London. Read More

An Old Master painting that sold at auction for £39,000 ($80,000) less than four years ago, recently sold for £750,000 ($1.2 million) after having been altered by contemporary artists Jake and Dinos Chapman and included in their latest exhibition at White Cube gallery, London. Read More

Christie’s fell just short of its presale estimate of £49.4 million/74 million (without premium) for its main Old Master and British paintings sale on July 5 with a total £43.6 million ($70 million) without premium, or £49.9 million ($79.6 million) including premium. Read More

Billed as “the greatest collection of 20th-century British art ever to come to the market,” a group of 117 paintings and sculptures that comprised the Evill/Frost Sale sold for over £41 million ($67.6 million) at Sotheby’s on June 15-16. The total more than doubled the previous record for a 20th-century British art sale held at Christie’s two weeks earlier (ANL, 6/14/11), setting more than a dozen individual artists’ records. Nothing was left unsold as collectors from as far afield as Australia and Canada, but mostly Britain-based, competed for the works which had rarely, if ever, been seen in public since a memorial exhibition in Brighton following Wilfred Evill’s death in 1963. Read More

Modern art again led the way at Sotheby’s much shorter sale on June 22 which saw 32 out of 35 lots sell for £97 million ($157.5 million) against a pre-sale estimate of £77.3 million/111.2 million. Read More

Christie’s opened its June 21 Impressionist and modern art evening sale with 40 lots from the estate of Swiss art dealer Ernst Beyeler, who died in 2010. Estimated at £46 million/67 million, 39 lots sold for £44.7 million ($72.5 million). The only casualty was an unusually large, late water lily painting, Nympheas, ca.1914-1917, by Claude Monet, that was estimated at £17 million/24 million. The painting was stamped rather than signed and considered unfinished, or at least unresolved, by observers and as such overpriced. After the sale, Sam Keller, the director of the Fondation Beyeler, said he was happy that the painting would now become part of the foundation’s collection. It had previously been exhibited by Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2010, though it is not known whether it had been for sale there and if so at what price. Read More

Phillips de Pury & Company opened the series with an evening sale on June 27 which they held in the ballroom of Claridge’s, one of London’s smartest hotels, which is more centrally placed—in Mayfair, close to Sotheby’s—than their premises in Howick Place, Victoria. Phillips were rewarded with a slightly higher turnout than usual, though the sale results were mixed. Read More